Tag: Central Bank

China's foreign currency holdings remained above $3 trillion in December even as the yuan capped its steepest annual decline in more than two decades.
Reserves fell $41.08 billion to $3.01 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement Saturday. That matched a $3.01 trillion estimate in a Bloomberg survey...

State-sponsored hackers who unleashed a digital bomb in key parts of Saudi Arabia's computer networks over the last two weeks damaged systems at the country’s central bank, known as the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, according to two people briefed on an ongoing investigation of the breach.
The central bank said...

In Donald Trump's first four years as president, he will not only choose three judges for the Supreme Court, he’ll also pick five of the seven members on the Fed Board of Governors. It would be impossible to overstate the effect this is going to have on the nation’s...

One month ago, when we last looked at the Fed's update of Treasuries held in custody, we noted something troubling: the number had dropped sharply, declining by over $22 billion in one week, one of the the biggest weekly declines since January 2015, pushing the total amount of custodial...

Bond investors may have another reason to worry after Donald Trump's election last week: Some of his allies are not fans of the Federal Reserve’s big balance sheet of bonds and want the central bank to shrink it.
They argue that the Fed's debt portfolio has damaged the economy by...

Trump's victory was predictable, and was predicted, but not by looking at polls. Polling has taken a beating recently having failed to predict the victory of David Cameron's Conservative Party in the British general elections, then Brexit, and now the election of Donald Trump. One can argue about what’s...

James Rickards is the Editor of Strategic Intelligence, a financial newsletter, and Director of The James Rickards Project, an inquiry into the complex dynamics of geopolitics + global capital. He is the author of The New Case for Gold (April 2016), and two New York Times best sellers, The...

With every major financial recovery since the second World War beginning in a place of greater debt than the one before it, how could we not have foreseen the financial crisis of 2008? In this episode of Meet the Renegades, economics professor and author, Michael Hudson argues we did.
How could...

One month ago, when we last looked at the Fed's update of Treasuries held in custody, we noted something troubling: the number dropped sharply, declining by over $27.5 billion in one week, the biggest weekly drop since January 2015, pushing the total amount of custodial paper to $2.83 trillion,...

It seems that the Obama administration's efforts to save the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton is finally starting to yield tangible results as WikiLeaks just provided the following update that Julian Assange was cut off from using the Internet at the Ecuadorian embassy in London effective Saturday evening.
We can...

The European Central Bank is becoming dangerously over-extended and the whole euro project is unworkable in its current form, the founding architect of the monetary union has warned.
"One day, the house of cards will collapse,” said Professor Otmar Issing, the ECB's first chief economist and a towering figure in...

China has the world’s second-largest economy, but its currency, the renminbi, has long been kept out of the International Monetary Fund’s elite club of the world’s strongest national tenders. That changed this weekend.
After years of liberalization reforms, the IMF announced Saturday the renminbi would join the bank’s group of...

The rise of Trump—and Bernie Sanders too—vastly transcends ordinary politics. In fact, it reaches deep into a ruined national economy that has morphed into rank casino capitalism under the misguided policies and faithless rule of the Washington and Wall Street elites.
This epic deformation has delivered historically unprecedented set-backs to...

William Engdahl recently explained how Washington used the corrupt Brazilian elite, which answers to Washington, to remove the duly elected President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, for representing the Brazilian people rather than the interests of Washington. Unable to see through the propaganda of unproven charges, Brazilians acquiesced in the...

There can be little doubt now outside of orthodox economics that the global economy is actually slowing, not accelerating as has been predicted. Economists themselves, however, continue to claim that things are getting better when the data strongly suggests otherwise. The latest depressing figures are from a pair of...

A weaker currency, once the cure-all for ailing economies around the world, isn’t the panacea it once was.
Just look at Japan, where the yen plunged 28 percent in the two years through 2014, yet net exports to America still fell by 10 percent. Or at the U.K., where the...

They’ve long been one of the most reliable sources of demand for U.S. government debt.
But these days, foreign central banks have become yet another worry for investors in the world’s most important bond market.
Holders like China and Japan have culled their stakes in Treasuries for three consecutive quarters, the...

Wall Street would have to come up with billions of dollars in additional capital in a proposed revamp of the Federal Reserve's annual stress tests that could also scrap some provisions that lenders have criticized.
As the Fed has signaled for months, it is considering changes that would raise the...

Time to toss yet another "conspiracy theory" on the composite heap of "theories that became fact." A recurring theme we have pounded the table on over the past nearly 8 years is that central bank policy has been the primary driver leading to not only a record wealth and...

Saudi Arabia's central bank stepped up efforts to support lenders in the Arab world’s biggest economy as they grapple with the effects of low oil prices. Banks’ shares advanced.
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, as the central bank is known, is giving banks about 20 billion riyals ($5.3 billion) of time deposits...

Analysts have been cutting estimates for U.S. earnings, after earlier projecting a return to growth during the third quarter.
The third quarter was supposed to be when earnings growth returned to U.S. companies. Not anymore.
Companies in the S&P 500 are now expected to report an earnings decline for the sixth...

Global stock and bond markets have been all over the place of late. Rarely have investors been so lacking in conviction. Confusion as to future direction reigns, and with good reason after the spectacular returns of recent years.
For how much longer can stock markets keep delivering? Is there another...

There’s uncommon dissent in the ranks of the Federal Reserve's primary dealers over the central bank’s interest-rate decision this week.
Two of the Fed's 23 preferred bond-trading partners -- Barclays Plc and BNP Paribas SA -- are betting against their peers and the bond market by forecasting officials will raise...

The biggest buyers of U.S. Treasuries have turned fickle on U.S. debt, just when they may be needed most.
Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, points out that for a fourth month in a row, foreigners were net sellers of U.S. notes and bonds, dumping $13.1 billion...

China has failed to curb excesses in its credit system and faces mounting risks of a full-blown banking crisis, according to early warning indicators released by the world’s top financial watchdog.
A key gauge of credit vulnerability is now three times over the danger threshold and has continued to deteriorate, despite pledges by Chinese...

In this week’s podcast, Michael Pento, fund manager and author of The Coming Bond Bubble Collapse, explains how the United States is fast approaching the end stage of the biggest asset bubble in history. He describes how the bursting of this bubble will cause a massive interest rate shock that...

One month ago, when we last looked at the Fed's update of Treasuries held in custody, we noted something troubling: the number dropped sharply, declining by over $17 billion, bringing the total to $2.871 trillion, the lowest amount of Treasuries held by foreigners at the Fed since 2012. One...

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president finds U.S. economy resilient despite drag from overseas.
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said Friday that “a reasonable case can be made” for tightening interest rates to avoid overheating the economy.
Holding rates at their current low level for much longer risks...

The McKinsey study Poorer than Their Parents? offers a new perspective on income inequality over the period 2005-2014.
Based on market income from wages and capital, the study shows 81% of US citizens are worse off now than a decade ago. In France the figure is 63%, Italy 97%, and...

The United States, Germany, and other economic powerhouses haven't learned the dire lessons of Japan's lost decades.
In 1998, when I was a reporter in Tokyo, an event happened that economists once thought impossible. Japan was at the height of its banking crisis, and as panic swelled, short-term market interest...